After spending a week in Carlsbad, our next stop – and final stop after two months in New Mexico – was Deming. The route took us past White Sands National Park but just before that it took us through Alamogordo with a great roadside stop called PistachioLand.
PistachioLand is also known as McGinn’s Pistachio Tree Ranch & Arena Blanca Winery but it’s best known for its most prominent feature – the World’s Largest Pistachio.
The World’s Largest Pistachio is 30 feet tall and was constructed in honor of Thomas Michael McGinn, the founder of Pistachio Tree Ranch who passed away in 2007.
Unlike some roadside attractions which you stop at for a minute or two and then drive on, PistachioLand is worth more of your time as you drive through Alamogordo. We arrived at about 1:30pm and so stopped to have lunch at one of the several picnic tables which are between the giant pistachio and their vineyard.
They offer a motorized farm tour for $2 per person, but we didn’t have time to do that as we were hoping to get to White Sands National Park that afternoon. One of the nice things about PistachioLand is that their farm tour is pet-friendly, so if you’re road tripping with your pups they get to join you. Although we didn’t do the farm tour ourselves, Truffles did take the opportunity to take a photo in front of the pistachio which towered above her, licking her lips in anticipation at what treats might lay inside.
Inside the gift shop (called McGinn’s Country Store) they had a couple of flavored pistachios you could try for free. The day we visited it was garlic pistachios and butter toffee pistachios, both of which were very good.
The gift shop itself had all kinds of different types of flavored pistachios, other products containing pistachios along with some non-pistachio products.
Some of the other pistachio flavors included:
- Pumpkin pie spice
- Cocoa roasted
- Maple & brown sugar glazed
- Garlic & honey roasted
- Sriracha honey roasted
- Dill pickle
- Habanero lime
- Green chile
- Red chile
I was driving the next leg of our journey, so Shae did a free tasting at the Arena Blanca Wine Tasting Room which is inside the gift shop. She enjoyed all the wines she tried which included a rosé infused with pistachio oil which she found surprisingly good.
Shae ended up getting a couple of bottles of wine, while I was more intrigued by all the different flavored pistachios. I ended up getting four different flavors of pistachios, as well as milk chocolate covered chili pistachio brittle.
All of these were great and incredibly flavorful. My favorite pistachio flavor was the green chili, although my favorite product of all was the milk chocolate covered chili pistachio brittle. It was delicious, with the chili giving it a good kick without being so spicy that it detracted from the brittle.
PistachioLand has an ice cream parlor next to their gift shop. They weren’t allowing customers inside when we visited in March 2021 due to COVID, but they had a table set up outside where they took orders and so they were still able to serve customers. Shae ordered an ice cream cone, while I got some pistachio fudge.
PistachioLand turned out to be a great place to visit on our way across southern New Mexico and is definitely worth a stop if you’ll be visiting nearby White Sands National Park.
Address
PistachioLand, 7320 US-70, Alamogordo, NM 88310
Totally adding this to my NM list. Thanks!!
Awesome! Hopefully Bugsy enjoys it too 🙂 If you need somewhere to camp along the southern part of New Mexico, City of Rocks State Park could be good. It seemed like many of the camping spots are in among the rock formations and there are a couple of pet-friendly trails there.